CRM 101: How to pick the CRM that fits your business
Sometimes we get questions from customers who are considering migrating their office over to a business telephony system and a CRM solution. They like the idea of one-stop for information capture, maintaining detailed contact records and contact activity history, appointment scheduling, and integrated telephony. But choosing a CRM from the dozens of options now on the market proves to be a source of confusion.
If you’re new to CRMs, how do you know which one is right for you? I find there are really two basic questions to get started:
- What I am using this for?
- How much do I want to spend?
First, why do you want a CRM?
Traditional CRMs are designed for the sales environment. They use sales terminology, they are set up to drive contacts through the opportunity pipeline, and they do a great job of tracking actual and potential dollar values of each record. Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamic CRM and Tigerpaw are all sales oriented CRMs that are very popular, user friendly and full of great features.
Not everyone is using their CRM in a sales environment. Some businesses are more interested in different information. For example, how many walk in clients does the office receive each day? What are the most common topics that people email in about? Can you have your sales team, your support team and your development team working out of the same platform?
Think about the primary information you want your CRM to capture and go from there to see if there are specific solutions. Salesforce.com is one of the most popular, most robust and feature-laden sales and marketing oriented CRMs. But there are others on the market that cater to different niches. For example, Vanilla Soft focuses specifically on helping agents boost sales calls. MaxHire is a great option for recruiting firms looking to track their opportunities. Blackbaud markets itself as a CRM for fundraisers and non-profits. Chances are, there is a tailored solution out there for your need.
Second, what is the cost?
The pre-packaged, tailored solution might be out there but be too pricey for you. CRMs vary widely in cost and some of them will seem quite expensive to small businesses. Subscription costs are usually per user, per year, although monthly subscriptions exist too.
Most CRMs have a free trial option, if not an entirely free basic version. Always take advantage of free trials and check out free versions. If you need more features than your basic version offers, check with the support team and see if they’ll let you pay by feature rather than forcing you to switch to a whole new version.
Zoho CRM offers paid add-ons to their free version so that users don’t have to upgrade to more expensive professional versions. If you’re a non-profit, ask about non-profit pricing.
In addition, if you’re even a little bit tech-savy, you can do a lot with the open source CRMs like SugarCRM, OpenCRX and V-Tiger. If that thought terrifies you – hire an intern to do some customization!
If you’re still struggling, we’re happy to answer questions about the CRM options on the market, although we can’t promise to know them all. Good luck with your CRM search!
Creating workflow rules in Salesforce
Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!
A client recently asked about how to automate task creation based on the result of a call in the call center. This is what we recommended. In order to make these changes and set up a workflow task, you’ll have to be a Salesforce Administrator on your company’s Salesforce.com account.
First, navigate to the Setup under your name in the top right hand corner of Salesforce, and then to Create -> Workflows and Approvals -> Workflow Rules under App Setup on the left. If a splash page appears, just scroll down and click continue. You should wind up here:
Now you’ll create a new rule – this rule is the task creation trigger.
Not all of the objects will give you the option to select “Call Result,” so choose accordingly! Click next to move on to the next page:
In the example above, the call result “Need to follow up” will follow a rule called “Reconnect,” that we’ve just created. Hit Save and Next to move on to the task creation.
In the page above, you will define what action is going to be taken. In this case, I’ve chosen to create a new task. This will take me to the next screen, which lets me define the task.
Here I can select who the task will be assigned the task, when the task becomes due, and other task descriptions.
You can also indicate whether the workflow rule is triggered immediately, or if there are time dependent workflow rules. You can add different actions to the same workflow rule too – this can really ensure that nothing gets missed!
The last step is to head back to the Workflow Rules page and Activate your rule:
So that’s how you make workflow rules and automatic tasks based on the Call Center call result in Salesforce.com. We’re still experimenting with the best setup here to keep our developers, support, sales and marketing teams connected. If there are specific tasks or workflow rules that work well for your company, let us know.
Salesforce Call Centers
This post is going to give you some information about the Salesforce call center: what does it do and why might your business want it?
First and foremost though, what is a call center? The Salesforce call center is basically a softphone within Salesforce. It typically appears in the upper left hand side of the Salesforce window, like this:
“No big deal,” you might say, “Softphones are old news, I already have Skype and Google Talk!”.
Ok, but the cool part about integrating a softphone into the Salesforce Call Center is all of the options for information tracking and capturing.
For example, you can quickly see what records are associated with a call. Incoming calls will pop a screen that shows the caller ID, call history, and opportunities linked to the caller:
Phone numbers in Salesforce will become clickable so that you can click-to-call rather than manually dialing. Whew, because that was getting pretty physically strenuous:
Salesforce keeps track of calls made, along with any of the information entered by salespeople. So you can start tracking the number of calls you make or your team makes, the call duration, and call result, without manually creating new records:
That’s all pretty great for sales teams who are trying to share information and records with each other. Each team member can immediately see the activity history, including calls, for all leads, opportunities and contacts. If a team member is off sick or otherwise busy, her team mates can make sure nothing is missed.
“I’m sold! Now, how do I set up a call center in Salesforce? “
You need a CTI adapter. A CTI is a Computer-Telephony Integration. It the piece of the puzzle that allows Salesforce to interact with incoming and outgoing calls. Not all CTIs have all the features mentioned above, and some CTI adapters have other features like power-dialing.
There are a few CTI adapters out there which can be found on the Salesforce AppExchange. You’ll have to do some research to figure out what works for your phone system and offers the features you’re interested in. This can be daunting if you aren’t familiar with telephony, but it doesn’t need to be.
To get started, check out this post on Basic Telephony Terms, and have a look at the phone systems you are using. Then spend a bit of time on the Salesforce AppExchange looking at the CTI Adapters. At InGenius, we’re very proud of all our positive reviews and we are always happy to answer questions about our products or your system.
Check back soon for more information on softphones vs. hardphones, business telephone systems, customizing Salesforce reports, and more!
Starting with the basics: terms for newbies
Integrated CRM and telephony programs can be intimidating for the uninitiated. Programs are often full of acronyms and may feel overly technical. The customizable options are exciting for seasoned professionals, but potentially overwhelming to first time users. So what does someone fresh to the field really need to know about CRMs and telephony to get started and to make the programs work well for their business?
The Basics
CRMs: Customer Relationship Management programs
These help document, monitor, and track a company’s interactions, primarily with its customers. The most popular CRMs right now seem to be the web-based programs. There are lots of great CRM programs out there, and we’ll get to those in a later post.
Telephony
A word for a phone system or a bunch of phones networked together. If your office has a phone system with extensions, or if you need to do something like “press 9 for an outside line” then you something about telephony.
A few important terms and features:
VoIP: Voice over Internet Protocol
This means speaking through the internet rather than through phone lines. The most well known VoIP provider is probably Skype, which allows users to download it’s software for free, make calls between web-based Skype users for free, and make calls from web-based Skype users to landlines for reduced prices.
SIP: Session Initiation Protocol
This is a standard internet language for calling via voice and video. I don’t really think it is important for the lay person to understand. It might be important to know whether you are connected to a SIP based service provider.
IP: Internet Protocal
Internet language – or – how information is sent and received over the internet. You may need to know something called your IP Address, which is a string of numbers separated by dots. This is the location of your machine on the internet, just like your home address is the location of your house in the world.
T1
This is a kind of phone line.
Call waiting
The ability of the phone to signal that another call is trying to access your line while you are on a call.
Conference call
A call involving more than two parties.
Screen Pops
This is like caller ID for computers, except that instead of just the number showing up on your phone’s screen, the contact information for the incoming caller “pops” up onto your computer screen. InGenius Connector Plugins can help your CRM “pop” screen identify additional information such as your history of calls with that phone number and notes made about that phone number, in addition to the number itself
Toast Pops
Ha! No really, this is a thing. Actually, it’s the same thing as above, except maybe the ‘pop’ isn’t the whole screen but rather a smaller window that appears from another application. Like toast. Coming out of a toaster. Get it?
CLID or CID: Caller ID
Why don’t we just call this ‘Caller ID,’ which everyone understands? I don’t know. Caller ID means that you can see who is ringing your phone before picking up.
Call Logs
These are records of inbound and outbound calls, or, all of the calls made from your phone. InGenius Connector Plugins will help your CRM log calls and attach records or notes to those calls. This is helpful for remembering each step of the sale or interaction and making sure that tasks do not fall through the cracks.
Cloud Based
When a program is based in the ‘cloud’ it means that there is nothing stored on your hard drive or local server. People appreciate that they do not need to download or install anything onto their computers, and that their data can be accessed from anywhere. Salesforce is known for being a cloud based CRM.
- — -
Things are evolving fast and different stuff is appearing all the time. Are there any other terms that you think are important for beginners? Are there other important features that you use currently, or would like to see in the future?
Happy 2012!
Wow!
It’s been a few months since we’ve updated the InGenius blog. That’s because we’ve been busy developing and perfecting some really great, easy to use telephony-CRM integrations.
What are telephony-CRM integrations you say? So glad you asked! It’s a way to make hard and soft phones connect to contact managers, (like Microsoft Outlook), and CRMs, (like Sugar and Salesforce). Your contact managers and CRMs are programs and software pieces you already know and use everyday. We just want to make it easier to put all these pieces together, saving you time and keeping you from losing track of important calls.
Our InGenius integrations are really smart applications. Over the next few posts, I’m going to show you the smartest ways to use these smart applications. If there is anything in particular you’d like to see, let me know.
What a great way to start 2012!
Get ready for a new Tweex.TV!
InGenius’ first iPad major application is getting ready for its second release this week! We’ve had a lot of fun with the updates – deciding about colours and UI elements, and a lot of soul-searching about which features make it into the build, or wait for the next build. In the end, we’ve decided to just to builds more frequently, instead of cramming everything into fewer, larger releases.
That said, our release this week will include:
- A brand spanking new colour scheme,
- Tweet Filtering! Our app can now filter out those obnoxious “Me Too” tweets, and even adapts dynamically to the amount of twitter traffic to filter more agressively if there are a lot of tweets flowing by. Among other things, we skip repeated retweets, short tweets, and any that contain any of our blacklisted words.
- View trending topics by region – you can now select a specific region to see trending topics. It’s kinda cool to see what topics are trending all over the world. Our app makes it easy to check this out!
- We’ve cleaned up the ads – moved them from embedded in the tweet stream to a dedicated ad location at the bottom of the screen (you can easily upgrade to get rid of ‘em eh)
- And lots more! (behind the scenes UI improvements, better refreshing, better show selection, etc)
Keep an eye out for the new Tweex this week at the Apple App Store!
Connect it ALL with InGenius Connector CRM Integrations
As a company, InGenius has been in the software business since 1986 and in the past twelve years has focused its efforts specifically on computer-telephony integrations. In the past four years we have amped up our integration focus to really focus in on providing telephony applications that support multiple platforms and resonate with customer’s needs. Our newest product, InGenius Connector for Salesforce, is providing our distributors with a way to provide their customers with an application that integrates with their offering and their clients environments. InGenius Connector for Salesforce is the first of many CRM integrations we plan to release and we’ve already helped several companies integrate with their custom CRM systems!
In a white paper, Lori Bocklund, President, Strategic Contact Inc. remarks on the issues with contact centers in implementing new technology; “Problems we see include not looking at systems in place to start out with and potentially leveraging something that already exists, over-buying (licenses, functionality, capacity, etc.), not allocating the resources to use it effectively, never getting to the “Phase 2″ functionality, not making process changes to get the most out of technology, and failing to help the users see the benefits and make changes.”
With InGenius Connector for CRM systems we solve these problems by providing:
- Multi-platform support on both the CRM side and the VoIP or SIP service provider side to help businesses leverage what they already have in place
- Per seat purchase options to avoid over-buying
- Simple deployment options that include mass deployment or easy end user download so massive resources for deployment are not necessary
- An abundance of support materials including videos, documentation, presentation and webinars to inform users how to get the most out of the application
- Seamless integrations with the CRM application users are familiar with so benefits can be seen right away and changes required to use the software are intuitive (For example, click on a phone number to call)
With growing competition and increased consumer knowledge, businesses are investing in CRM software to better develop and nurture their customer relationships to improve their current and future bottom line. What businesses are missing however is that when introducing new software or technologies they are adding an additional tool on top of an already busy customer service representative or salesforce. This is where InGenius Connector for CRM systems comes into play. We take all these tools and merge them into a single access point so that customer service representatives need only access with one interface, CRM providers extend their functionality beyond their application, and VoIP providers integrate with business processes. InGenius Connector for CRM truly connects it all!
Connect your phone with your CRM!
Over the past few weeks InGenius has attended several trade shows and we were blown away by the demand for our CRM integrations for InGenius Connector. Specifically we have been showing our InGenius Connector for Salesforce application that allows for Salesforce.com users to make and recieve calls directly from Salesforce.
CRM users are thrilled with the application because it allows them to easily track their calls, add notes to a call, have contact records pop-up on an incoming call, and click-to-call from a contact page. What is comes down to is that InGenius Connector for Salesforce helps businesses and small contact centers improve their efficiency, provide better customer service and have more accurate call reports; all of which translates into huge cost savings and potentially greater sales. According to the blog post by John Reed, if businesses can not provide quick, quality service to their customers, the business is doomed to fail. With InGenius Connector for Salesforce, InGenius helps businesses provide exceptional customer service by tying their telephone to their CRM application. Users will never have to put a call on hold to find the contact’s information because it will automatically pop-up, managers can easily keep track of phone call records, and to reach a customer it’s as simple as clicking on their phone number. As Reed puts it “Good CRM means never having to say hold!” and with InGenius Connector for Salesforce you won’t have to!!!
If you would like more information on InGenius Connector and CRM integrations contact us at sales@ingenius.com and we would be more than happy to answer your questions.
Off to the WILD West…well IT Expo West!
We are super excited to be at IT Expo West this week not just because it’s in LA and we run the chance of brushing shoulders with a few movie starts, but also because we’ve got some really cool integrations between CRM and VoIP that are going to be a hit with business owners and VoIP providers alike. Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, MS CRM, and TAPI are just some of the integrations we’re starting with to help seamlessly integrate VoIP and business processes like CRM systems. Using InGenius Connector as the call control application users can make calls directly from their CRM application. Users increase productivity, managers enhance call tracking capabilities, and VoIP providers increase the value of their product offering while differentiating from the competition. All in all, InGenius Connector and CRM plug-ins can help both CRM users and VoIP providers enhance their sales services and provide greater value to their customers. Stop by booth #115 at IT Expo tomorrow to say hello and see the applications in action.
We’ve already run into one celebrity on our way here; the Travelocity gnome!
Are you plugged in?
So I was sitting at my desk thinking about all the applications that I use on a daily basis to ensure that I am tied into my co-workers, managers, and customers and realizing how thankful I was for Mitel Unified Communicator Express and InGenius CRM Plug-ins.
As the product marketing specialist at InGenius, it is vital that I maintain communication with the development and technical support team, senior management team, sales representatives, channel partners, beta users, and customers so that I can do my job effectively and provide our users, partners and customers with the quality and helpful customer service they deserve. With Mitel Unified Communicator Express it has made my life so much easier and my relationship management much more effective. I can easily lookup and dial a contact, send an email to a caller, create new outlook contacts and with the aid of the CRM plug-in, have the caller’s CRM page open automatically when they call my extension.
Since Mitel Unified Communicator Express also has a built in optional softphone, I have created multiple profiles on my lap top computer so that I can connect to my desk phone when I’m at the office and my softphone when I am on the road. It’s so simple to install and use that I am not sure how I ever got along without it. In fact, it is only second to Outlook for the application that I use the most. This application has helped me to fill plugged in to all my contacts without feeling that I have yet another application open on my desktop.
So I was sitting at my desk thinking about all the applications that I use on a daily basis to ensure that I am tied into my co-workers, managers, and customers and realizing how thankful I was for Mitel Unified Communicator Express and InGenius CRM Plug-ins.
As the product marketing specialist at InGenius, it is vital that I maintain communication with the development and technical support team, senior management team, sales representatives, channel partners, beta users, and customers so that I can do my job effectively and provide our users, partners and customers with the quality and helpful customer service they deserve. With Mitel Unified Communicator Express it has made my life so much easier and my relationship management much more effective. I can easily lookup and dial a contact, send an email to a caller, create new outlook contacts and with the aid of the CRM plug-in, have the caller’s CRM page open automatically when they call my extension.
Since Mitel Unified Communicator Express also has a built in optional softphone, I have created multiple profiles on my lap top computer so that I can connect to my desk phone when I’m at the office and my softphone when I am on the road. It’s so simple to install and use that I am not sure how I ever got along without it. In fact, it is only second to Outlook for the application that I use the most. This application has helped me to fill plugged in to all my contacts without feeling that I have yet another application open on my desktop.
One Sweet Suite! Mitel Releases Live Content Suite for 5360 IP Phones
It has been a few months since we first mentioned Mitel’s Live Content Suite application, and we are thrilled that the product has finally been released for Mitel 5360 IP phones.
Developed by the InGenius Telephony Software team, this application is truly innovative and forward thinking in the way it embraces personalization and leverages live content.
Live Content Suite has three main parts:
- Live Desktop Portal, a web-based phone programming portal
- Live Blogger, an application for using standard blog tools to deliver custom content to phones
- Live Applications, applications such as LiveTwitter Reader, Live Weather, and Live Flickr that deliver dynamic content to phones
This is just one of the many “Unified Communications 2.0″ applications to come out InGenius and users can expect to see more in the very near future!
Live Content Suite is expected to become available for other Mitel display phone models (5320, 5330, and 5340) in the coming months.
Check out www.livecontentsuite.com to learn more!
How the Application Framework for SpectraLink phones came about
We’re really excited about the Application Framework we’ve built for SpectraLink phones. This product adds a whole new range of capabilities to the handsets, and adds a whole new way of developing applications.
We’re seeing a TON of interest in this product at the Team Polycom event in San Diego (Feb, 2010), especially among Hospitality sales people and dealers.
We’re announcing this framework with two initial applications: A directory application, and a Set to Set texting application.
Fig. Texting application, and directory app – with search window, and some pinned contacts.
The project started when we were asked to develop an emergency broadcast system for use in a large cruise ship. They needed a way to display messages on all passenger phones, and on all the SpectraLink phones used by the crew on the ship. We used an InGenius product called Broadcast Alert to handle the creation of the broadcasts, and we built this framework to handle information display on the handsets.
We wanted to implement scrolling text on the handsets, and we wanted crew to be able to respond to messages – to acknowledge receipt, and to possibly request assistance. The standard handset display only allowed a few lines of text, and user interactivity was pretty difficult.
We ended up switching to using the handsets in a graphical display mode – which allows us full control over the contents of the display, and we can display icons, and buttons in addition to text – text in whatever font we choose!
We designed an extremely sophisticated algorithm to manage display updates – the algorithm determines which pixels on the phone have changed between updates – and only sends the differences. This GREATLY reduces the communications traffic, and makes this display updated mechanism feasible.
Then we built a really awesome notification app to handle the broadcast alerts…
Then, things got really out of hand, and we went nuts and built something we think is just awesome!
So, what is the InGenius Application Framework for SpectraLink phones?
We’ve created a system that instantiates a small virtual operating system for each of the SpectraLink phones in the system. (And we’ve tested this with thousands of phones, on a non-beefy server.) Each of the tiny operating systems allows you to control the phone’s screen and ringer, and can respond to button presses. We have a nice library of system calls that let you write to the screen using text, graphics, and icons, gather input from a user, etc.
Basically, using standard .Net tools like Visual Studio and C# developers simply write a very small app that runs on one phone. The Framework then replicates this app across all the phones! We’ve even built a sophisticated simulator that allows developers to create and debug apps in .Net – then easily release them to real phones.
The OS supports multi-tasking – so all the apps you have running on your phone run simultaneously, in the background. In our testing, we’ve written alarm clock apps, timers, broadcast alert apps etc, and they all run smoothly in the background – and can jump to the foreground when required.
Apps can easily talk to each-other – making it easy for apps like our Directory app to start our Texting app and pass in the current contact…
We’ve built in a login system – so users can securely share phones. When you log into a phone, your apps resume, with all your data and program states intact. Your apps can even keep running while you’re logged off - so any texts or messages you may have received will be available when you next log on! The log in system is ideal in situations where phones are shared – like Nurse call stations, or big box retailers.
There’s a passthrough for legacy OAI applications – commands not meant for our framework are simply sent along to the legacy apps.
Check out the details on our product page.
Finally, here’s a view of the Simulator!
InGenius Application Server for SpectraLink Handsets
After just releasing InGenius Connector for General Availability on Asterisk Exchange and unpacking from ITExpo, the InGenius team is packing their bags again to head West to attend the TEAM Polycom event next week in San Diego, CA.
Located in the Applications Beyond Voice Pavilion, booth 504, InGenius will be revealing the InGenius Application Server for Spectralink Wireless Handsets.
This incredibly cool application server offers something for both Spectralink users and Spectralink Application developers. It is shipped with a set-to-set texting application and a corporate directory look-up application, and also has the ability to run multiple applications simultaneously. As an added bonus, InGenius Application Server houses a framework that can be extended to develop or customize applications using commonly available Microsoft .Net development tools.
Whether you are looking to increase company communication and productivity or trying to extend the value of your Spectralink 8020/8030 Wireless telephone offering, InGenius Application Server offers a quality solution that fits current and future business needs. If you are attending TEAM Polycom we would love to give you a demo, stop by booth 504 and say hello!
InGenius is attending ITExpo East 2010
InGenius is very happy to be attending ITExpo East in Miami on January 20-23 as members of the Ontario pavilion in Booth 512. We are going to be showing InGenius Connector and all the cool things that it can do to help accelerate and simplify phone communications for those with a Polycom phone, Asterisk switch, BroadSoft Network or Mitel switch.
InGenius Connector has been in beta for the past few months and we are receiving a tremendous response from Polycom sales representatives, Asterisk solution providers, ITSPs and basic end-users about the value and benefits it supplies to them and their customers. Over and over we hear how much people love InGenius Connector and how well it integrates with their Outlook contacts, and Active Directory or LDAP directory. Users just can’t get over the cool Google search functions and how easy the application is to install and use. Once a person starts using InGenius Connector, they really wonder how the ever got along with out it. If you plan on attending ITExpo East please stop by booth 512 and we will be happy to give you a demo of InGenius Connector.
The World is Just One Click Away with InGenius Connector
We are at BroadSoft Connections 2009 and we are very happy to introduce InGenius Connector as a fully supported application for the BroadSoft Network.
Combine the power of the Microsoft®, the power of Google®, and the power of Broadsoft to accelerate and simplify all your phone communications with InGenius Connector. InGenius Connector is a PC application that provides click-to-dial capabilities and incoming caller ID screen pop, with full BroadSoft Directory, Microsoft® Outlook® and Active Directory® or LDAP Directory integration. And, InGenius Connector provides integrated web searches with GoogleMaps® and GoogleSearch® to locate and dial new contacts with just a single click. Integrated optional softphone, same great UI!
If you are at BroadSoft Connections we would be happy to give you a demo. Stop by booth 41 and talk with our CEO Dale Gantous, or our CTO Rich Loen. Click here to see a video of InGenius Connector in action!
Enhanced hotel guest experience with Application Builder for Mitel phones!
Have you ever been to the hotel and needed to rent a car, look for a restaurant, wanted to contact the hotel’s spa, or just needed more towels? Of course you have, but how many times did you have to flip through a huge hotel binder, call the front desk or open your lap top to find what you were looking for? Imagine you go to a hotel and everything you are looking for is already programmed into the hotel’s phone. All you have to do is push a button and menus for car rental businesses, local restaurants, hotel spa services, and housekeeping are all there and waiting to be accessed. Well, this is exactly what InGenius Application Builder was designed to provide! It’s super easy to use and gives you all the amenities you require at the touch of a button. What is really cool about this application is that you can also choose from a variety of languages. If you are in France but don’t speak French, you’ll have no worries if the Mitel phone in the hotel has Application Builder. By the time you get to your room the French phone menu could automatically be switched to English or it could offer you a language menu so that you could choose to have it display English instead of French. This would be a really great application for any hotel wanting to provide their guests with better customer service and a better all round experience.
Live Content for Mitel 5300 Series Phones!
InGenius is very excited to be a part of the Mitel Business Partner Forum & Technology Expo 2009 happening today and tomorrow in Las Vegas! At the expo we will showcase some of our new software: Live Content Creator and Desktop Power Portal. These cool applications give users the ability to have LIVE content on their Mitel 5300 series phones.
DESKTOP POWER PORTAL
- Screen Caption of Desktop Power Portal
InGenius Desktop Power Portal is a sophisticated, yet easy-to-use web portal application for personalizing both telephony functions and new live content applications on your Mitel 5300 IP desktop phone connected to a 3300. To enhance the features of Desktop Power Portal combine it with Live Content Creator to program live, up-to-the-minute easily editable content on phone keys!
LIVE CONTENT CREATOR
Allows you to easily create and manage a variety of LIVE content for your Mitel 5300 series phone.
Perhaps you want to give your sales staff an extra boost by offering a few promotions…
Live Content Creator
Or you want to follow what people are saying about your company on twitter…
- Live Content Creator
Or you’re curious about the weather…
Live Content Creator
Live Content Creator provides up-to-date information to a device that’s always on giving you the freedom and flexibility to do a variety of things like promoting “What’s On Today”, showcasing Daily specials, and personalizing your phone with data feeds like Weather, Twitter searches and even Flickr photos!
So how does this InGenius Software work?
- Program live content onto a button on your phone using InGenius Desktop Power Portal, or using a Guestbook application in the Application Builder for 5360 phones (coming soon). For more information on Application Builder, click here.
- When programming the phone key, select the content source, which can be a local atom feed behind your firewall or an externally hosted blog.
- Press the programmed button on your phone.
- The Live Content Creator server, an optional part of InGenius Desktop Power Portal, retrieves the live content, formats it appropriately for your phone model, and makes the content “safe” by removing flash animations and other non-compatible content.
- View content on your phone!
Live Content Creator Architecture
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Traveling through Ottawa? Check out this Airport Art!
Ottawa photographer Olga Novoa is displaying some of her recent work at the Ottawa airport – but you’ll need a boarding pass to see.
Give yourself an extra 20 minutes when you’re next traveling to check it out!
Exhibit 05
Details:
OLGA NOVOA PORTFOLIO PHOTO EXHIBIT 09
Ottawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport
YOW Art Gallery – The domestic/international holdroom.
Starts: April 7, 2009.
Open Daily and Nightly including Saturday, Sunday and Holidays.
Closes: After 12 weeks / Daylight hours are best for viewing.
If you are not a lucky traveler during the months of Spring please visit
http://tinyurl.com/photoexhibit and make sure to read the Polaroid tags.
You can also visit the actual display at the YOW gallery via
http://tinyurl.com/YOW-gallery
For more information about the artist, photographic services and prices
please contact:
OLGA NOVOA
Photographer & Graphic Artist
_____________________________
EVOLUTION | PHOTO & DESIGN
Ph: +1 613 601.1150
Ottawa, On.
C A N A D A
http://www.olganovoa.com/
info@olganovoa.com
InGenius exhibiting Mitel solutions at IT Expo
We’re heading off to IT Expo tomorrow (Booth 501) to show off our new Mitel product line, including:
- Unified Communicator Express
- InGenius Broadcast Alert
- InGenius App Builder
- InGenius simplER
So, what the heck is this stuff?
Mitel Unified Communicator Express
The marketing blurb goes like this:
<blurb> Mitel Unified Communicator® (UC) Express is a lightweight, serverless unified communications client that connects your Mitel business phone with Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Active Directory, Windows Live Messenger, and Windows Desktop Search on your PC. Productivity enhancements like click-to-dial, incoming caller ID pop-up, PC-based missed calls and speed calls list, and personal (Microsoft® Outlook®) directory integration. Available at Mitel. </blurb>
UCX is cool, because it’s a PC telephony client done right. It can optionally run right in your Windows taskbar, and can even be fully utilized from the tray icon. We have spent hundreds of hours trying to make the UI simple, yet extremely functional. You won’t find a huge app popping up every time the phone rings, or when you want to make a call – simply type in a few characters of the name of the person you want to call – and the app will find the number and dial. Nothing pops up or distracts the user.
UCX is the new version of Mitel’s Integrated Office Companion. UCX is an incredible upgrade to IOC, adding many cool features such as:
- Multiple phone profiles: If you have phones at your office, home, and on the road, you can set up phone profiles. UCX will automatically sign onto the phone appropriate for your location,
- Support for Mitel 5330, 5340, and the new 5312 and 5324 phones,
- Excellent support for Vista,
- And, we’re very excited to announce that UCX will soon have a built-in softphone, which you can use when you’re away from your desk.
- UCX is also extendable through TAPI, or our plugin API which we can adapt to your CRM solution, even if web based like salesforce.com. It’s a powerful tool for all employees, not just sales or call center agents.
InGenius Broadcast Alert
Broadcast Alert is a mass notification system that can send alerts to 10′s of thousands of your employees, via alerts that pop up on their PC’s, and their Mitel phones. Features include:
- PC client that’s easy to role out in large installations,
- PC client can display an alert, including an audio alert, and text and graphical instructions, and can even completely lock out the user’s PC – so the user is compelled to leave their office.
- Alerts can be displayed on Mitel’s 5300 series phones – currently supported on the 5340 and 5330 models, and soon on all 53xx phones.
- Alerts can be sent to user specified zones,
- Each Zone can have a custom exit instructions and graphic, allowing you to specify exit instructions for each floor of a building, or each building on campus,
- The system is EXTREMELY easy to maintain – new clients show up in the right zones automatically, without any administrator involvement.
- Users automatically change zones if they are mobile – so a laptop user will automatically join the zone of whatever building they are in as they move about the campus.
InGenius Application Builder
Build HTML applications for your Mitel and Polycom phones using a wizard based online tool.
App Builder is an online tool that makes it easy to create HTML applications for the hospitality industry, with other verticals coming soon.
You simply follow through the wizard, then click on download to obtain a sophisticated HTML application customized for your property.
We’re excited to be demonstrating new support for Polycom phones at IT Expo. Polycom’s phones include colour models which are perfect for use with App Builder. Stop by and check it out!
InGenius simplER
simplER is a great product for users of Mitel’s 3300 series of switches. simplER monitors your 3300 looking for calls to 911 or any other emergency numbers you specify. When it detects an emergency call in progress, simplER looks up the caller in your Active Directory database, determines the caller’s location and name, then alerts approriate first responders for that office area, building floor, or campus building.
As the name implies, simplER is incredibly easy to configure and maintain, and is extremely flexible in it’s notification options. You can customize the notifications that are sent, and easily manage the notification groups by simply creating Active Directory groups following a simple naming convention.
simplER is an essential tool for EVERY Mitel 3300 system installation.
New and Exciting Stuff we can’t talk about here!
We’ll be highlighting some other exciting new stuff at IT Expo – including solutions for Asterisk users, advanced SIP softphone functionality and more. Please stop by at booth 501!
We’ll be posting photos and more blog entries from the show. Keep checking back for more exciting news from the show!
Heading off to Coldplay!
We watched these guys on some CBC show a while ago. They looked pretty cool- hope the show’s good!
Update: And it was a very good show! Tons of photos here:
Everyone there had cameras, even SLR’s. Video. Nobody stopped ‘em. Not like the “old” days.
